


that's what friends do

by redledgers



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post-Season/Series 03, being sad in snuggies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 16:03:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20567087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redledgers/pseuds/redledgers
Summary: Four hours later, Candy greets him at the door, and he flashes his best cheerful grin as he presses two bottles of wine into her hands. “Lead the way to the sofas, darling.”





	that's what friends do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PandaInTheStars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PandaInTheStars/gifts).

> bless panda for this prompt. i hope it was everything you dreamed.
> 
> bless me for somehow doing a fic title that wasn't a poem or song.

A week after Chloe disappears, to Europe, to _why the fuck do you care, Lucifer?_, he stops trying to call her, stops trying to apologize for the myriad of things he has done to cause her pain, stops trying to talk her down from some metaphorical ledge she _must_ be standing at the edge of.

A week after Chloe disappears, he finds that he is the one on this ledge, in a hell of his own creation, one that he can’t dull with the buzz of alcohol or the pretense of sleep. Even Maze seems to have abandoned him, and at any other time he might have been grateful for the distance, for everything she’s done to him, to Chloe. But right now, he’s just lonely. So he calls the only person he thinks he can trust to offer some comfort, even if for a few days.

“I messed it up,” he says immediately when Candy answers the phone. He hates himself already, but hasn’t he always hated himself?

Candy is, thankfully, very proactive. “Yours or mine?” she asks without missing a beat. Despite her neutral tone, Lucifer can hear the concern in her voice; can almost see something akin to pity in her eyes.

“Yours, please,” Lucifer says, managing somehow to keep desperation from leeching into his words. He can’t stand to stay in LA for much longer, not if he can help it. “See you soon.” 

Candy makes a sound that he’s not sure is an actual word, but he isn’t thinking straight and he needs to leave Los Angeles_ just like she did_ and so he hangs up and gets to work packing a bag. 

Four hours later, Candy greets him at the door, and he flashes his best cheerful grin as he presses two bottles of wine into her hands. “Lead the way to the sofas, darling.” 

“That bad?” she asks softly, after she’s closed the door, after they’ve settled in her living room with wine and ice cream and snuggies, like they had the first time they met. It’s comforting, like a sort of routine that hadn’t quite yet developed, but one that let Lucifer believe, even if it was for a few hours, that everything was fine, that Chloe was waiting for him in LA, that he could somehow fix this.

“She left,” he says, halfway through his bottle and wishing he could feel _something_ from it. “She finally came to her senses and she jetted off to Europe with the urchin.” Candy doesn’t know the whole story, _can’t_, in truth, but he continues anyway. “I knew she would, I wanted her to, at one point, but now she has and…” He can feel the ice cream melting onto his hand now, watches it drip down his wrist before he gives up on talking and shoves another spoonful of it into his mouth.

Candy sets aside her bottle of wine and prods his leg with her toes. “From what I know about Chloe, I think she’ll come back. It’s not bad to get some space.” 

Lucifer vaguely remembers texting her one night, very recently, something along the lines of _The Detective has broken off the engagement __:)_ with no context. Because he hadn’t had people to share that small moment with. But people don’t need some space when their world has been turned upside down, when someone they thought they knew killed a man just because he wanted to and turned out to really be their worst nightmare. And somewhere, lingering in the midst of self hatred and doubt, he knew there was grief.

It’s not the space he’s worried about. It’s the aftermath. “Thank you,” he says instead of anything else, and looks at her. “I believe I owe you.”

Candy’s smile is fond when she shakes her head. “This is what friends do.” _They’re there for each other. _

_I’m here for you, you know that?_

_I’m here for you._

The words tug at his heart, and he knows Candy doesn’t _know_ how those words make him ache. So he holds his bottle out for a toast. “To friendship.” And to space, however far it may be.


End file.
